I'm not nearly as far progressed as Treckie (8/13) but for me mastery has felt superior, as every death I remember was either the cause of a mistake on my part or an unblocked hit, I have around 7k less health than Treckie. It is however very different depending on bosses (Council is very bad for mastery for example) but overall I can say taking an unblocked hit consistently took me close to death, and a single block absorbs significantly more than the extra health from the stamina offers.

I however never went below ~168k health unbuffed, as I had gemmed all my 359 pieces for stamina and my 372 pieces for mastery, which resulted in more or less constant health as I was upgrading from 359 to 372.

Personally, I'm very excited for the shoulders and the swords, because it means that we should see their BoE equivalents drop in price. Sure, they're still better than the ZA/ZG drops, but the fact that there are alternatives that are almost as good should mean that the ones selling the BoEs have to be a little more modest with their asking prices.

Personally, I'd love to see a block cap set. I tried to build one in Chardev yesterday and just couldn't do it. Please take a look at my stage five model and suggest changes. What unbuffed ctc is needed to hit the cap?

Personally, I'd love to see a block cap set. I tried to build one in Chardev yesterday and just couldn't do it. Please take a look at my stage five model and suggest changes. What unbuffed ctc is needed to hit the cap?

pogmothoin wrote:Dodge must be around 1% lower than parry right? So they should scale like this 12%/13%, 14%/15%, so on and so forth correct?

Dodge should be about 1% lower than parry, so that you are gaining optimal avoidance from your rating, including all usual buffs. More of either is always better, but usually if you are lopsided in some fashion you can make reforging choices to correct the discrepancy.

Hey there, i just have one question as im about to start heroic raiding, is there any reason why the heroic version of necklace of strife Click me seems not to be mentioned in the heroic raid section ? Or did i miss on something important ? Thanks for ur answers

Last edited by Klorak on Tue Mar 29, 2011 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Klorak wrote:Hey there, i just have on question as im about to start heroic raiding, is there any reason why the heroic version of necklace of strife Click me seems to be not mentioned in the heroic raid section ? Or did i miss on something important ? Thanks for ur answers

I added it. Wowhead didn't report its drop location when I last did a full review, and I would rather not list something that drops than list something not available to players.

I was wondering how does the crafted tanking chest stack up to now that it has a socket? Its still ranked last in Stage 4 but shouldn't it be closer to the top near t11 chest?

Cheers!

The Hardened Elementium Hauberk? It's ranking reflects the addition of the gem socket. It sucks regardless, due to the lack of mastery and large budget wasted in useless expertise.

As shown in the ranking, the crafted DPS piece is still better due to its mastery. Each of the remaining pieces ranked above either has mastery, or has some of its strength budget converted into an extra large pile of avoidance.

I was just wondering because I have the crafted one and i have 2.5k VP after tonights raids. Its either gonna be the chest, greaves of splendor or numbing that has to be replaced and I was reallyyyy hoping to get one of the blues changed first. I guess my fears have been confirmed xD

...which is exactly why I don't prioritize CTC in my recommendations. Otherwise people will start thinking that a piece with 10 more mastery rating (but much less avoidance and health and even threat) is better than a higher iLvl piece.

I think recommending for maximum damage reduction yields a better balanced understanding of the benefits of each stat.

...which is exactly why I don't prioritize CTC in my recommendations. Otherwise people will start thinking that a piece with 10 more mastery rating (but much less avoidance and health and even threat) is better than a higher iLvl piece.

I think recommending for maximum damage reduction yields a better balanced understanding of the benefits of each stat.

To be honest it'll be the same in most cases, but yes, I agree.

The one exception would be if I'm geared to the extent that a one percent extra CTC reliably would push me over 102.4. I don't see how I could defend being one percent "crittable" in that situation.

For others I believe the break-point comes earlier than that though. Reason being that the kill-range is likely to be taking two unblocked hits in a row, and that makes the benefit of closing the remaining gap to 102.4 scaling squarely. Somewhere above 95% CTC in a balanced set I'd guess will see this 'dispute' heating up again.

...which is exactly why I don't prioritize CTC in my recommendations. Otherwise people will start thinking that a piece with 10 more mastery rating (but much less avoidance and health and even threat) is better than a higher iLvl piece.

I think recommending for maximum damage reduction yields a better balanced understanding of the benefits of each stat.

I apologize for my ignorance here, but it looks like you are suggesting that once the next iLevel item is available I need to go with that, and pick among those equivalent iLevel items for the best itemization. For example, Carrier Wave Pendant might be the best item for me at 346, but once I have 353 available I should get that even though CTC might be a little reduced, but the additional stam/str outweigh the difference. Same when there are 359 available, just find the best item in that tier of gear that fits my role.

As far as that goes, should I re-equip my Hardened Elemental Hauberk over the Chest of the Steadfast?

Knievel wrote:I apologize for my ignorance here, but it looks like you are suggesting that once the next iLevel item is available I need to go with that, and pick among those equivalent iLevel items for the best itemization. For example, Carrier Wave Pendant might be the best item for me at 346, but once I have 353 available I should get that even though CTC might be a little reduced, but the additional stam/str outweigh the difference. Same when there are 359 available, just find the best item in that tier of gear that fits my role.

As far as that goes, should I re-equip my Hardened Elemental Hauberk over the Chest of the Steadfast?

Am I reading that right, or taking it too far to extremes?

Not really.

Let's pick this apart a bit.

Stamina (and by all means the basically non-existent resistance-gear) is your best friend in extremely magic-heavy fights. Nothing* you can avoid, block or even soak with armour.

Stamina is PROBABLY your best friend for any fight where the boss go HULK SMASH+ from time to time. This would hold true even if the damage is physical. Think Festergut three inhales.

Armour play the same role as before, mitigating physical damage, but as armour is more or less totally tied to ilevel, there really isn't all that much you can do about it.

For most of the fights in Cata, however, 'refusing to die' seems to be the best way to handle it from a tanking point of view. While you can't reliably reach the level where you 'refuse to die' unless you have some kind of base health covered, more health doesn't help you all that much.

Refusing to die can be achieved in two ways-.1) You accept the absolute minimum of attacks to hit you, bypasing any defence you have. This is done by increasing CTC to the absolute maximum (and still maintaining the base health needed). 90% CTC is better than 88% CTC even if it means that you're going 10% dodge and 10% parry instead of 12% dodge and 13% parry to get the extra block needed to squeeze out those last 2% CTC.2) You accept the absolute minimum of damage over some kind of statistical amount of time. Given the example above you'd configure your gear for 88% CTC, because over time 5% extra avoidance will reduce a lot more damage taken than 7% block.

All that said. Unless the higher ilevel item comes with a huge chunk of threat-stat (triple digit hit/expertize/haste/crit) it is indeed likely to be an upgrade over most anything with a lower ilevel. There are a few caveats though:

1) Agility converts into better than 60% dodge-rating.2) Strength converts into better than 25% parry rating.3) Mastery is, point for point, better than dodge or parry for BOTH CTC and overall damage reduction. I believe (Theck, bash me if I'm wrong) that there's equal benefit from a damage reduction point of view from 114 mastery and 132 avoidance-rating. The numbers should apply to 12% dodge or 13% parry -ish numbers.

Thus you can only trust stamina and armour to always increase in a known way as you increase ilevel, but you have to bring out that calculator when your ilevel 346 gear has 120 parry and dodge but that 353 item comes with 170 mastery and 80 haste-rating. 120 parry, 72 dodge and 48 mastery (because you did remember to reforge) versus 170 mastery and 48 parry (because, again, you reforged that haste). The 346 is probably better, unless you really want that extra stamina and armour, but it's not MUCH better, and we're comparing a tanking piece with a dps one now.

*For purposes of comparision we simply disregard the white-damage inflicted by the boss for these types of fights.+HULK SMASH being defined as any attack that'll two-shot you from whatever health you can reliably have prior to attack.-It used to be three ways, but we no longer have the option to drastically change the amount of armour available to us.

I purchased each of them took note of the CTC then returned them. The ret one's gave me over 1% more CTC. Granted, the 4 piece would be nice but 6 seconds more GoaK doesn't seem worth giving up all that mastery on the ret legs. And I'm also taking into account that replacing the gloves/hands/shoulder to get the 4 piece bonus would be silly as well based on the superior non tier pieces.

GlockComa wrote:It seems to me the T11 RET legs are better than the Tank legs.

Can someone confirm this?

I purchased each of them took note of the CTC then returned them. The ret one's gave me over 1% more CTC. Granted, the 4 piece would be nice but 6 seconds more GoaK doesn't seem worth giving up all that mastery on the ret legs. And I'm also taking into account that replacing the gloves/hands/shoulder to get the 4 piece bonus would be silly as well based on the superior non tier pieces.

The tank legs provide better overall damage reduction, so no, the ret legs are not "better" period full stop.

Now if your goal is ctc, then yeah the ret may very well provide more. Likewise, if you can hit the block cap, then maybe the ret legs are better. But those are not universal conditions.